Does the choice of therapy (surgery, thrombolysis, interventional techniques) affect mortality in patients with free-floating right heart thrombi?
In patients with free-floating right heart thrombi, mortality is high (44.7%) and does not appear to be significantly affected by the choice of therapy.
Severe pulmonary embolism was the rule in our series of FRHTS (mortality rate, 44.7%). The choice of therapy had no effect on mortality. Emergency surgery is usually advocated. However, thrombolysis is a faster, readily available treatment and seems promising either as the only treatment or as a bridge to surgery. In patients with contraindications to surgery or lytic therapy, interventional techniques may be proposed.
Chartier et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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